This guide is for restaurants just starting out on Twitter. After getting a few of my own client’s restaurants set up with Twitter, I discovered they really didn’t know what it was all about and how to use it to increase patronage – let alone what on earth to tweet about. After all, they had a restaurant to run, not camp out all day managing their Twitter accounts.
This guide covers setting up an account, customizing your facts and contacts, branding the page, who to follow and what to Tweet about. It also sheds some light on what exactly Twitter is for and how to use it to increase awareness about your business and your place in the community – both physically and online.
Contents
What is Twitter?
Setting up your account
Adding your bio and contact info
Branding your page
Followers and Followees
Tweeting
Feeding and caring of your followers
Glossary
Helpful Links
What is Twitter?
When Twitter first reared its massive head in cyberspace, I was reluctant to join the bandwagon. I mean really, who cares what I am “doing” at any given moment? And do I really need another time-suck in my busy workday just to read about what others are “doing”? But when peers in my field starting asking if I “Twitter’d” and have my clients had any success with it from a marketing perspective, I knew I needed to at least check into it. I am so glad I did. Turns out Twitter is not at all about my shouting to the planet that I had a James Beard-worthy burrito for lunch, but in fact where can my followers find such a burrito, and if you follow them on Twitter you can get 50% off when you buy two of them all next week.
TWITTER IS NOT ABOUT SELLING SOMETHING
Its more evolved than that particular scenario, but basically, Twitter is about information sharing, building relationships, loyalty and conversations with your followers. Its a gold mine for business marketing.
140 CHARACTERS ONLY
Twitter is a web-service that allows users to send short messages of no more than one hundred and forty (140) characters. It is often referred to as a ‘micro-blogging service’ where each message can be thought of as very short blogs posts. Think of Twitter as text-messaging to many people all at once.
FOLLOWERS, FRIENDS & TWEEPS
With Twitter you can decide on which people you want to follow. This means you want to be included in the messages they send out. Likewise they can follow you back if they want so that you become mutual friends. That is they follow you and you follow them. You might call your followers Tweeps. Before we move on and get into finding your way around Twitter and learning how to use it effectively let’s set up an account and go over Twitter relationships and how they work.
Setting up your account
If you haven’t already done so, login in to Twitter.com and choose a name that you will be known by in the Twitter community. Put some thought into it as it will be the ultimate representation of your business’s face in the Twittersphere. The shorter the better as it leaves more character space for your tweets. After signing up follow the prompts to secure your name, business, or funny ‘handle’. Something like davesmith, davestours, or thedaveman. Your new Twitter name will automatically generate an “@ sign” that will begin the rest of your handle, like @davesmith.
GIVE SERIOUS THOUGHT TO YOUR TWITTER NAME
Give some thought to your Twitter name. You can be creative, but you’ll want it to be relavent for your followers/followees. Might be confusing if Dave Smith the dive shop owner has a Twitter name like @pastordave when he’s using Twitter to drive traffic to the dive shop website. Dave would be better off with @divingdave or @davesdives. If you change your mind later on, or think of a more effective @name, Twitter allows you to change it at any time without losing your followers or history.
Adding your bio and other info
In the upper right corner of your Twitter page, click on the link “Settings”. The opening tab will be “Account” and is where you’ll plug in all your business info, some of which will be visible in the right column of your public Twitter page.
BIO
In the settings tabs in your account you’ll find a field to enter a short bio (one liner) that will appear in the right hand column of your Twitter page. A brief description of your restaurant, type of cuisine, demographic, etc will suffice.
LOCATION
Very brief: city, state
Better not to try and be clever here. Everyone viewing you knows you’re on “The Web”. And “USA” has spammer written all over it. Entering the actual city and state your restaurant is located in helps Twitter users find you when broadly searching for restaurants (or anything) in your particular city or state.
WEB ADDRESS (URL)
Enter the entire URL for your website, including the http://www… This will become a link from your Twitter page. You may want to add a special page to your site to capture inbound traffic from Twitter, such as http://www.lebistro.com/twitter.html. I’ll describe how you can further capitalize on Twitter landing page further down this page.
PASSWORD
Next tab. Be tricky! Your password should be at least 6 characters and not a dictionary word or common name. Change your password on occasion.
Branding your page
AVATAR
You’ll also want to create an avatar (like a headshot or some other 1”x1” representation). Logos are good for restaurant avatars as long as they are clear in a small format. If you logo is a long text name or has detailed artwork, opt for headshot of the chef, something on the menu, a cocktail, a couple of staff members in uniform or anything representative that looks great as a small image. Whatever you do – do NOT settle for the Twitter default avatar – no one follows a brown square, at least not on purpose.
BACKGROUND
Twitter settings allow you to really brand your page to match your website, topic of interest, or personal tastes. Twitter offers a handful of basic backgrounds to choose from, but you may go much further and upload a custom background image that reflects your brand, website and messaging. Either choose a standard background style from Twitter’s small collection, or upload a full page background image from your collection.
Word of advice: Don’t use a smallish image and repeat it as your background – it can be very distracting to the viewer. Use one big image, keeping in mind various screen sizes, and select a background color to cover any extra space for people with larger screen resolutions.
Better yet, create (or have a designer like me create) an original branded background with a strategically placed logo, information, headshot, business phone, or whatever you desire. The objective is to make your Twitter page resemble your website in some fashion – branding.
COLOR SCHEME
Also in the design tab, you have an opportunity to customize the color of the text, links and sidebar. Choose link colors that stand out from your main tweet text, and not get lost in the sidebar color choice.
Twitter backgrounds I have designed
Vermont Family Business Initiative (UVM) VT
Echo Lake Aquarium, Burlington, VT
Children’s Literacy Foundation, Vermont
Vermont Sustainable Exchange
8th Street Grille, Holland, MI
84 East, Holland, MI
Froggy’s, Holland, MI
BeachHouse Bar+Grill, Kirkland, WA
Dragonfish Asian Cafe, Seattle, WA
Social Media Commando, Joe Mescher, Burlington, VT
UNnouncer, Miami, FL
Deep Dish Creative (this website!)
Followers and Following
Twitter has a Find People link where you can enter a particular topic, for instance business or food, and it will display a list of any Twitter name that contains that phrase. Twitter browsers such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic have an even more dynamic search engine for topic searches. Identify some interesting Tweeps and ‘follow’ them. Many pages you follow might follow you back, but the goal for the number of followers you have is quality – not quantity.
Great Tweeps for restaurants and bars to start following include:
- Chambers of Commerce (whether you a member or not)
- Convention and Visitors Bureau (whether you a member or not)
- Local newspapers (especially free weeklies)
- Local television stations
- Regional magazines (like Seattle Metropolitan, Vermont Life, Sunset)
- Hotels in the area
- Area attractions
- Theatre, Playhouses, museums, music venues and annual festivals
- Other local restaurants and bars
GREAT STUFF
Once you have started following dozens (if not hundreds!) your follower count will begin to rise. Notably after you start tweeting great stuff on a regular basis. “Great Stuff” is defined as interesting links, replies back to your followers, welcome tweets, and thank you’s to those retweeting your “great stuff”. You will want to take a few minutes every week or couple of days to comb through your new followers to either follow them back (hopefully) or block the assorted spam and unsavory types – whom you’ll recognize immediately what/who they are (porn sites, etc) – usually just by their avatars.
HELLO AND THANKS
The followers you want to follow back deserve to be recognized by your fine establishment with a nice “Thanks for the follow @HiltonSeaside!” Especially the big players. You don’t have to reply to everyone, but there will likely be people you know or recognize from your community that you should give a shout out to. They probably have some followers who will click to see what you’re all about. Keep in mind, also, that many MANY more Twitter users will come across your page, and although they don’t click the follow button, they are potential patrons with their OWN followers, and so on and so on. See where this is going?
A WORD ABOUT AUTO-FOLLOW AND SPAM
You may have seen, heard or read about websites that peddle free Twitter auto-follow and auto-reply programs. DO NOT SIGN UP for them. They are spam and your followers will smell it a mile away, possibly un-following you. Taking a few minutes daily/weekly to manually cultivate your follower garden should be enough.
If you know people or organizations that have Twitter pages, search for them, follow them, and let them know (on Twitter of course!) that you are finally in the Twittersphere.
Tweeting
Twitter is for telling your story, or someone else’s in 140 characters or less. Twitter is also about listening. Ask a question or comment publicly to a follower, then sit back and listen. Acknowledge your favorite Tweeps, by replying directly to them on Twitter or retweeting some of their links, comments or observations. This is a good way to start a base of updates for your page, along with post links to your blog, website, or other articles you’ve found relevant to your interests. Using open-ended questions is a good way to generate some conversation.
ANATOMY OF A GOOD RESTAURANT TWEET
Note that this sample tweet gets the most from the 140 character real estate, with a little left should a follow want to retweet it. Your @name appears automatically and links to your Twitter page. This tweet showcases a major venue that LeBistro is following, a standard shortened URL that links to the website, and a location hashtag that will show up for anyone searching the term “Seattle”. This is another way to gain followers by not following them first, or them finding you through a mutual friend.
Here is a collection of starter tweets to give you idea of what/who/why to tweet:
@LocalHotel Welcome to the neighborhood! http://yourlink.com #yourcity
New Press! “New @LeBistro shines with stellar food and service……” http://link.gs/mou1 – THANK YOU @BostonGlobe !!!! #boston
Stop by the @LeBistro tent at the @foodfest Sunday and pick up your Free App coupon! http://yourlink.com #yourcity
.@LeBistro Is Now Hiring All Restaurant Positions! Stop in or send resumes to jobs@lebistro.com #yourcity #jobs
Thanks @afollower! Looking forward to it! Tweetup Aug 16, 2009 RSVP: http://twtvite.com/xyz
Thanks for the follow@LocalTheatre! Patio opens this weekend – stop in and say hello!
RT @somefollower Oh my, FREE PARKING downtown this Wednesday! Anyone know why? #yourcity
Feeding and caring of your followers
Twitter is not the kind of thing you can just set-and-forget. If you are serious about including Twitter in your arsenal of marketing tools, you need to stay involved daily. You may want to delegate a few staff members to manage your business’ account. These ghost Twitterers should be on hand to monitor your stream, answer any DM’s (direct messages) and keep the conversation going should someone else in the Twittersphere be tweeting about you.
STAYING ON TOP OF PROMOTIONS
To get the most mileage from a “Twitter-only” promotion, you’ll want to tweet about that special or coupon daily for the duration of the promotion. Tweet about it at various times of day throughout the week or month so your tweet pops up in different followers’ streams. Most people aren’t glued to Twitter 24/7, and those following many Tweeps could miss your tweet as their stream flies past them.
TWITTER PAGE ON YOUR WEBSITE
Its not a bad idea to create a special Twitter page on your website and have all of your tweeted links land there first. Its a great way to thank your followers, offer them a little treat, like a coupon or Twitter discount, just for following them. This Twitter landing page is also a good way to capture traffic hits and gives you an idea of which tweets are more enticing than others by looking at the analytics at a later date.
Glossary
@ sign – this character is placed immediately before (@lebistro) any Twitter name. It tells Twitter it is an actual Twitter account and automatically becomes a link to that account.
# hashtags – are community-driven and create additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags or categories, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag. For instance #seattle included in a tweet will place that tweet in anyone’s stream searching for “seattle” specifically.
RT – retweet. Automatically populates in a tweet you’d like to forward to your followers. Gives credit to the original tweeter.
DM – direct message to one of your followers who ALSO is following you. DM’s are private and do not show up in your public timeline. Can only be sent through mutual followers.
Tweeps – General term for your followers/ees, even in other social networking platforms.
Tweets – Posts on Twitter by twitterers
Tweetup – an in-person meet up of Twitter members
Twitpic – TwitPic lets you share photos on Twitter .You can post pictures to TwitPic from your phone, your dashboard (like Tweetdeck, Seesmic, etc), or through the site itself.
Free Twitter Tools
Tweetdeck – a very popular and useful ‘dashboard’ for managing your tweets, followers and search
Seesmic – another ‘dashboard’ for managing your tweets, followers and search
Twitter-friends – view your relevant network and stats about your tweeting behavior compared to other Twitter users
Twitalyzer – evaluate the activity of any Twitter user and report on relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media
There are many other great tools, free and paid services, that can be implemented to help you track the effectiveness of your tweets. Contact me for further information on creating a Twitter presence for you that really makes a difference in your bottom line.
Helpful Links
Twitter.com
My Quick Tips on the Do’s and Dont’s of Twitter
ProBlogger’s TwiTips
How to Retweet on Twitter
A Visual Guide to Twitter
I hope you have found this guide useful and informative. I’d love to hear your story about starting out with Twitter and how it helped nurture genuine relationships with your regular patrons and followers, and improved traffic through your door. I’m available to assist you in setting up your account, branding your presence, populating, tweeting, and walking you through the various tools that help you track your progress.
Want to ROCK your restaurant on Twitter? >>
Not on Twitter yet? Not only can I set you up and do all the technical mumbo jumbo in a snap, together we can create an eye catching, branded background for your Twitter page – something that says “Hey, we’re serious over here, and we love our followers!”
